@sam wonders how to respond after a bad driver interaction:
Q6. When you have a dangerous interaction with a driver that doesn't involve a crash (drivers throwing things, pulling in front of you and getting out of their car and attempting to stop your bike, etc.) do you call the police, file a report later, get away and then do nothing, or something else? What factors go into making your decision?
@ascentale@sam It truly saddening that the majority of replies (seemingly all from #northamerica ) concerning reporting a life threatening incident on a bicycle involve such disparaging comments on interactions with our law enforcement agencies. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve seen a single comment about being helped or supported by police regarding #bicycle stuff. #bikenite@bikenite Sure seems to say something about how perceptions are being shaped.
@Brownian_motion@enobacon@ascentale@sam@bikenite I once had a cop next to me at a red light and I waved them down to show them someone ahead parked in the bike lane. They then drove up and gave them a ticket.
Of course I have seen far more cops using the bike lanes to pull people over or get around traffic, but it was nice to win one.
@rowdypixel@Brownian_motion@ascentale@sam@bikenite there's a stretch of Naito where it splits off of Barbur Blvd that's got no bike lane and the right car lane frequently backed-up at a standstill for the Ross Island bridge (#ODOTGTFOpdx), one day I'm riding down the left lane (posted speed 40mph or so) and there are two ladies with a guidebook at the unmarked crosswalk stairway peeking from between the cars, so I slow, like are you going to cross, hear screeching tires behind me (nobody...
... nobody was in my mirror when I started stopping) and my reaction was to come off the brake, but then driver doesn't stop for them so I stop and give this person an earful (apparently these ladies decide it's not the place to cross) and ride off at a much more leisurely pace than necessary, after the bridge ramp, there's a cop parked there and he PA's at me something about "obstructing traffic is a violation", clueless about the FTY bit
@ascentale@sam A6: I've reported shit to cops in the past, but they've never given a fuck. Probably partly because I've never had a license plate.
The guy who really seriously deliberately tried to force me into cross-traffic with his truck, I wasn't able to get his plate. Same for the people who cruised through the stop sign and broadsided me. Fortunately in that case I was on foot and jumped onto their hood. I pounded on it a bit before sliding off, I hope I damaged it.
@ascentale@sam Oh and the guy who rear-ended me and sent me to the ICU in a coma for days, that guy I never even saw. Bumper was truck-height and that's all we know. (We know that from the height of the dent in the back wheel.)
@moira@ascentale oh wow, that's a bad one! I'm glad you're okay. So far I've been lucky and never been actually hit except at very slow speeds (though I've had some very close calls at high speed).
@moira@ascentale yah, I normally have "don't call the cops for anything, they'll either do nothing or make it way worse" kind of views, but I kind of think more drivers at least need police reports filed against them for stuff like this just to normalize it a bit and have whatever cop at a desk at least remember that bikes are a thing that technically they're supposed to care about every few days, so I keep going back and forth.
@sam@ascentale Yeah, basically. The cops will obviously be on the driver's side, but it's good to get the reports in. "Vision Zero" is a political winner and this interacts with that.
That's why I still report if it's really bad, because those reports can show the same abusive behavior to different people over time. I know one guy lost his license because he kept intentionally terrifying people cycling on the same quiet country road with his distinctive white pickup truck.
#BikeNite A6 @cainmark@sam@moira@ascentale I keep a chronological list of license plates / descriptions and info about the incident (usually a traffic law violation) with video for most of them. I would report it to insurance companies if they would let me, have logged some on sites like nearlykilled.me, but not found a productive outlet for #DriverAccountability info. Oregon law allows civilian citations but it's an onerous process, probably starts with the driver learning your address 😟
@moira@ascentale@sam ugh sorry those things happened to ya. Once I had a driver slowly edging towards me. I yelled into her open window that I was there and she kept inching over and my handlebars scraped her car as I kicked her car and applied brakes. I am not sure if she might’ve had ear buds in or had hearing issues but luckily she wasn’t driving very fast and just drive off as I stopped to check on the parked car I got sandwiched into.
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